If it's any consolation to the critics who contend that Apple has forgotten how to innovate, Apple's spending on research and development has climbed significantly this year.

Apple’s annual Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is giving us a good look inside of the tech giant's R&D expenditures. And so far this year, they're up 32 percent.

What that boils down to in terms of dollars and cents is about $4.5 billion. That's how much Apple has coughed up for research and development in 2013.

Apple accounts the increase in expenditure to increase in personnel, also to increased expenditures it had to make to support expanded activities. Apple believes that “focused investments” in R&D are crucial to its future growth, the filing states, and that it expects to make further investments in this sector down the line.

Although there is no denying that $4.5 billion is an enormous amount of money, it's ultimately just a drop in the bucket when you consider how much cash Apple still has in reserves.

The 5c is a mid level phone, quit trying to compare it with the 5s which is a high end phone... I'm sure devolving a new processor and fingerprint scanner to work with the iPhone the way it does wasn't cheap either, plus the money for r&d for the iPhone 5s probably came from two or three years ago...

My wife's 5s was just replaced. It was 3 weeks old. It was having a lot of issues. I did a clean install, updated the iOS. AppleCare on phone had me run some tests. Took it to apple store and they did a few things as well. Finally one test they did and I am not sure, they said it did not work, so they gave her a new phone.

The 5c is a mid level phone, quit trying to compare it with the 5s which is a high end phone... I'm sure devolving a new processor and fingerprint scanner to work with the iPhone the way it does wasn't cheap either, plus the money for r&d for the iPhone 5s probably came from two or three years ago...